Traunkirchen
Around the year 1020, Benedictine monks from Salzburg founded a monastery - the parent parish of the Salzkammergut - on a peninsula in the Traunsee lake. But this place fascinated the people long before that. The exceptional cult site on the Johannesberg mountain over the deep, menacing water of the lake, the bone-chilling former stations of the cross, as well as the magnificent baroque fisherman's pulpit unify the mystical and the sacred.
Tradition, history and ritual are brought to life in the lake procession for Corpus Christi - emerged actually out of necessity after the church burned down in 1632 - or in the old, unchanged tradition of Antlaßsingen (singing the suffering of Christ) on the eve of Good Friday.
Old villas, the love story of Sophie Loewenthal and the unhappy Nikolaus Lenau, the documented "former hideout of pagan pirates" and the exceptionally beautiful cemetery - Traunkirchen is a one-of-a-kind!
